Owner Grooms Feathered Friends Into Free-Flying Performers

“I am not a California flake,” declared bearded and long-haired Ski Meinschein as he cuddled Rojo, a colorful scarlet macaw, one of seven birds who are his roomies in a tiny, one-bedroom Newport Beach apartment.

“Besides,” said the World War II Navy veteran who was torpedoed on a destroyer and who later spent 25 years as an oil field worker, “I was born in Indiana.”

Meinschein (“call me Ski”) got his nickname for his hotshot water-skiing antics on the Ohio River, where he once thought of building a marina. That failed, so he headed for California.

“I was never an Indiana-type dude anyway,” he said, pointing out that at first, “people think I’m a little weird. In fact, at one time I thought so myself.”

He became a popular local figure about 13 years ago when people began watching him put his birds through their free-flying acrobatic paces at the beach in Newport.

Ski was in the news recently after four of his birds were allegedly stolen by someone he thought was a woman who later turned out to be a man. The birds were later recovered.

“Man, that was terrifying,” said Ski as Firebird and Wildfire, a pair of New Guinea dusky lories, went through their routines of playing dead in his hand.

After each performance, Ski praised both birds while Rojo, Prince, Princess, Madonna and Shawn, his other avian roomies, looked on attentively from their perch in the bedroom.

They were all screeching.

“Hey, hey, let’s keep it down,” demanded their owner, who notes that the bird group is worth $13,000.

Rojo is of a species listed as endangered.

“They’re all jealous when they don’t get to perform too,” said the Birdman of Newport Beach, as he has become known from his years of performances at Newport Pier.

“I don’t give them food as a reward for their performances,” said Ski, who specializes in releasing the birds to free flight. “They always come back,” he said, attributing that to his special brand of affection training.

“I have the ability to understand them to a high degree,” said the self-taught bird trainer, who joshes that he is a high school dropout who attended the University of Street and majored in T-shirts and bumper stickers. “You can’t see this anywhere else in the world.”

Now retired and occasionally getting a paying gig for his birds at birthday parties and special events, Ski said he is out to enjoy life with his flying friends. “The birds are everything to me,” he said.

In fact, Ski has dropped out of the fast lane.

“I’m trying to enjoy life with the birds and the people I meet who like my birds,” he said, although there is some hustle to his life. “The birds are a lot of work. I have to feed and clean up after them.”

But that’s part of his background.

“I was raised as a farm boy and was always close to animals and nature,” said Ski, who looks younger than his 63 years. “That’s the result of a good diet, sleep and work. “I never see a doctor.”

The past 13 years of his life, those with his birds, have been his happiest, he said.

“I talk a lot with the birds. We have a close relationship. I understand their lingo and they understand what I have to say,” he said.

Ski, who was divorced 15 years ago, said, “Now I’m married to seven birds. They have a lot of love to give.”